Monday, November 17, 2014

Buffalo Trace Expands Distillery Site

Buffalo Trace Distillery has purchased 233 acres of land adjacent to its current location in Frankfort, Kentucky; the company announced today, bringing the total acreage of the site to 378 acres.

The recently acquired land includes approximately 100 acres of woods, a farmhouse with barns, and two ponds. It has a private entrance off Lewis Ferry Road (the road that runs behind the distillery), as well as road frontage off U.S. 127. From the farmhouse, the entire Buffalo Trace Distillery site can be viewed.

Buffalo Trace has yet to determine a final use for the acquired property but intends to plant its own corn, rye and barley on the site, from which it will make bourbon, to provide a true farm-to-table experience. It has not been determined if the home-grown grains will be used for a current brand, or if a new brand will be created.

"We are excited about the many possibilities this additional acreage will present to us and look forward to laying out some plans for the future," said Master Distiller Harlen Wheatley.

The purchase price of the land is not being disclosed. Buffalo Trace Distillery is owned by Sazerac.

It could be that Anon is referring to the approach Alice Waters took with her restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley CA in the 1970s, and soon thereafter used by others like Restaurant Nora here in WashDC. The restaurants searched for and served local food products, meaning that the food on the table had come as directly as possible from the persons growing it and was chosen by the persons serving it with no third-party processing and no long-distance shipping, etc. If one reads foodie mags (all over our house) and "Food" sections in newspapers, one should see, as I do, that the original Waters concept has grown like topsy to incorporate more than just eating local, causing a cynic to ask, "Isn't MOST food farm-to-table?" It's the intervening steps that make the difference to some. But, maybe you should have said "farm-to-bottle" instead. Thanks, again, Chuck, for keeping us posted on what the majors are doing.